Russ G
3 min readNov 6, 2023

I'm sorry, I don't think you're being honest here.
10,000 people have died so far in Gaza according to Hamas.

There is no issue with that death toll that has led to massive worldwide protests and pundits and columnists predicting World War 3.

Yemen will pass half a million deaths by year's end and no one is shutting down Paris or London to protest that.

Ukraine passed that half millions deaths a while ago and everyone's doing their best to help the Ukrainians handle it while carefully not getting involved themselves.

Syria is right up there too. Plenty of international intervention, not a lot of rallies in the streets.

These are conflicts with death tolls 40-50x what’s happening in Gaza, and they’ve been raging for years.

Let's take a look at this word salad run on sentence that I guess you mean is your direct answer.

"The real reasons the Israel/Palestine issue brings the intensity of feeling it does include the fact that this conflict shows the futility of creating ethnostates in what is certain to be a multicultural future where people of differing national identities are going to have to learn to share land and resources as equal, the leveraging of past and never-properly addressed injustices inflicted by one people against another to justify inflicting oppression on a third people who weren't involved in the original oppression, and a recognition that there are echoes of some things in the imperial/colonial/19th Century right-wing nationalist past that people on the Left feel an obligation to prevent from ever recurring."

1) Israel is not nor has it ever been an ethnostate. It is among the most diverse countries on the planet (including 20% Arabs that are full citizens) and has zero laws requiring any religion or ethnicity to be a citizen or receive full rights. It is pretty much the only multicultural state in the Middle East, certainly the only one that doesn't abuse LGBTQ+.

Saudi Arabia is an ethnostate for Arabs. Iran is an ethnostate for Persians. Germany for Germans, France for French, Egypt for Egytians, etc. See how Israel is one of the few countries other than the US that IS NOT an ethnostate and it's both lying and ridiculous to claim otherwise?

2) People of differing national identities need to learn to share land? Do you hear yourself? Maybe save your criticism for the party in this conflict whose stated goal is to wipe Jews from the face of the earth, and not the one that has accepted 5 partition plans since the 30's.

3) Never-properly addressed injustices. Like close to a million Jews being ethnically cleansed from the Arab countries in the Middle East and, the ones who lived, being forced to emigrate to Israel? Those families are over that and you don't hear them complaining to the UN about it, even thought it's much more cut and dry ethnic cleansing than anything that happened to the Palestinians.

Nowhere else on Earth other than Palestinian camps will you find 3rd and 4th generation refugees. Second generation refugees in the US are called Americans. Second generation refugees in France are called French... except in the massive unitegrated Arab encampments around Paris. Hmm. Interesting. Almost like, again, your criticism only applies to one side in the conflict and it isn't even unique to Israel.

The left is worried about colonization, but not in Azerbaijan? Or Darfur? Or any of the other places I mentioned? There is demonstrably nothing like the response the Israel/Palestine issue is getting globally for any of those issues even though they involve many, many more people.

None of what you said makes the slightest sense.

Israel isn't an ethnostate, so it's not about being an ethnostate.

It's not about a multicultural future, as Israel is among the most multicultural and progressive countries on earth. Hell, it was founded by communists and is one of the only places where widespread communes have worked.

It's not about sharing land, as Israel has agreed to every partition plan that's been proposed since 1937, even ones that were bad deals for Israel. They also gave up a ton of land in the late 70’s for peace, including Gaza.

It's not about letting go of the past. You're thinking of the Palestinians.

It's not about colonialism or war or ethnic cleansing, or even the death toll. The scale of this conflict is miniscule compared to other conflicts less than 1000 miles away from Israel that have been going on for years without this level of response.

You can try to defend it if you want, but the facts are very much not on your side.

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Russ G
Russ G

Written by Russ G

Autodidact on most topics. Just doing the best I can to figure stuff out.

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